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I listened to the OGD video, but did not hear the part, reported by Federal Computer Week, about this:

“Administration officials drafted the new directive in a way that lets agencies implement broad open government objectives in whatever way seems best, Kundra said.”

Does anyone know if Kundra actually said something like this on the OGD video? (And if so, at what point in the video.)

As a former federal bureaucrat, I am somewhat surprised (but only “somewhat”) that the White House’s OGD Team (e.g., Kundra) is letting each federal agency make its own decision about how to implement the admittedly “broad open government objectives”.

When the objectives are “broad”, then it becomes very easy to do almost anything and declare “success”.

So it looks like the White House does NOT really know how to define what it means by success, so it is hoping that some of the people in the federal agencies will do stuff (or come up with metrics) that “work”. Then the White House can say “Oh, that’s what I was talking about.”

With his Army background, I think Sam might agree that this approach to “leadership” by the White House OGD Team is called “leading from the rear”. The thing is, real leaders take the lead. They don’t try to get others to “crowdsource” the decisions that only the leaders should make.